fun little #Mastodon network nerd dork special talk time about a #Steamdeck and 4 seconds of jitter that drove me absolutely insane:

for more than fucking year i've stopped doing Moonlight/Sunshine to my #Steamdeck from my gaming rig cuz it started doing these microstutters every 30 seconds and i could not figure out what it was.
I went insane installing Apollo vs Sunshine, virtual device drivers, switching to a hdmi virtual display dongle, tweaking Steam network settings, etc.

Eventually I gave up because I started playing some non-AAA games natively on the deck so the need stopped arising for Moonlight.

But now since Death Stranding 2 is out I decided to try again.... and it was still doing it

I kept thinking it was the Deck wifi or something scanning every 30 seconds so just was doing all this crap.

then I finally wondered if it wasn't just the deck but everything in the house.
So I watched my whole house traffic and noticed a similar tiny bit of network activity happening every 30 seconds to a few devices.
I thought maybe home assistant, etc. but nothing i powered down was changing anything.

so i put the full wireshark client on my deck and did a 90 second long capture to get 3 events and finally fucking got i and it was not remotely anything i would have expected

*every 30 seconds there was an ARP flood across two entire fucking subnets from my Blue Iris NVR server*

it was just hitting every fucking IP in the range, so like 500+ going "HELLO????????"

why?

over a year ago i swapped a camera for another one and never disabled the old camera in Blue Iris; i just hid it. i think maybe i thought i would swap the cameras back or something.

so for over a year, every 30 seconds Blue Iris was going "WHERE IS THIS CAMERA? HELLO????" and fucking flooding the network with these tiny requests that were unnoticeable unless you were trying to stream a game since that required a constant 0 interruption network connection because of frame rate and refresh rate matching shit.

I disabled the camera properly and now everything is back to full smooth glory. So time to fight death with my baby.

so TMYK: Disable your cameras properly in BlueIris or it will become a little scanning bitch

#BlueIris #Steamdeck

you awake suddenly to flashing lights and sirens. still groggy, you clamber from your bed, spill into the hallway, and dust off the nearest console.

∆ RESERVE POWER: 28%
∆ COORDINATES: NaN
∆ CREW_STATUS: E
∆ SURROUNDINGS:
∆ × unk nebula .4LY _AFT
∆ × unk black_hole 73LY PORT
∆ × distress_beacon 1587KM STBD
∆ ENCODING: unk/unicode
∆ AFFILIATION: unk
∆ HULL_TYPE: unk

now wide awake and confused, you acknowledge the alarm and try to reach your crewmates through your communicator, but there is silence. for hours, you search your deck, your section, the common areas, the airlocks, the bridge, and even the captain's quarters and find no traces whatsoever of anyone else aboard. the escape pods are all present and still sealed.

frustrated, you make your way to the hangars and prepare a shuttle for takeoff. the shuttle's terminal reminds you that setting out without authorization will immediately trigger an investigation and any wrongdoing carries a steep penalty. you roll your eyes, sigh, and type 'sudo takeoff -fautopilot'.

the shuttle's engines thrum, and the hangar doors shudder slowly heaving open into the cold quiet maw of the abyss. you've little to lose and your curiosity has gotten the better of you. you are 89% certain that the distress signal you saw could be a lead on vital information, but what did 'unicode' mean?

several minutes pass while contemplating the sloppy signal, and the source of the beacon comes into view. the vessel is surrounded by what appears to be tens of thousands of rudimentary mirrors attached to thrusters and a myriad of smaller units. nearly all of them appear to have collided with another at some point and the few that remain appear to be repeating the same signal amongst themselves ad infinitum. the shuttle's computer is unable to identify the origin of the ship. you find its visage uncanny, maybe even unsettling. its hull is a dull grey and bears only an unintelligible radial ovoid emblem somewhat reminiscent of biological morphology.

drawing closer, you can see an open hangar barely able to accommodate your shuttle. taking over the controls yourself, you land and hastily don an a life support suit. the abandoned ship's interior has no power and a thin atmosphere with zero humidity, no oxygen, and oppressively high concentrations of organic particulates. the corridors have signs in a language you have never seen and overbearing star-themed decor. you think you've made your way to the other side of the ship and notice a device floating near a hatch. it's tethered to the wall and covered with colorful switches and two sticks. intrigued, you grasp the device, and it fits your hands abnormally well. 'this must be a prehistoric human ship', you mutter to yourself as you attempt to discern the objects' purpose. you try pressing all of the buttons, entering ↑↑↓↓←→←→BA, when suddenly you hear a suble crash echoing in the distance. the hangar door creaks open but stops partway.

as you slide through the gap in the door, your headlamps reveal that this hangar's surfaces are coated in a dense sludge. you find two hairy and pulsating mounds nestled together between the airlock and what looks like some sort of pod-ish or train-like vehicle in decay. you scan the formation for bio or heat signatures, but your equipment can make nothing of it. you cautiously approach the unknown masses, closing the distance to just a few meters, when a cyst bubbles up amongst the fleshy sacs, bursts, spewing smoke, and from it emerges a bald man with glasses and a crazed look in his eyes. "I'm so glad you're here!", he exclaims as his body begins undulate and morph into an amorphous monstrosity.

'fuck fuck fuck - I thought CEOs were just an urban legend!' terrified, you turn around and activate your personal thrusters to flee. The creature gives chase, bellowing, "Finally, I have a new user to onboard into a new Microsoft 365 Copilot Premium subscription!". you're scrambling to squirm back through the hanger door, but in the chaos, your hand slips, and then only darkness

I woke up at 3am last night, and still half asleep, had a thought that I JUST HAD TO WRITE DOWN. Pretty sure I’d just won the Internet, I fell back asleep.

In the morning, I was greeted with this gem on my phone:

“2 ninjas are called a pair of sneakers.”

You’re all welcome.